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Oct 23, 2011

Ubuntu 11.10 has multiarch support. This is a feature that makes the installation of 32bit applications on a 64bit OS easier. Well that doesn't work with DraftSight. The package failed to be installed correctly in every possible workaround I tried. DraftSight installed and worked after some tricks but it was marked as damaged so it had to be removed. (You are unable to update your system or install new programs if you have damaged packages).

So the only way to install and run DS on a 64bit Ubuntu 11.10 is to completely ignore dpkg.
How to do that? Here are the necessary steps.

Copy the contents of ~/DraftSight/var and ~/DraftSight/opt into you system's /var and /opt folders

Open a terminal and type: cd ~/DraftSight/DEBIAN then type sudo ./preinst and sudo ./postinst

Now you are able to work with DraftSight on your 64bit Ubuntu without any dpkg problems.

I don't like workarounds like this but unfortunately it is the only way to install DraftSight on a 64bit Ubuntu 11.10 system.

Important Update: This workaround is for DraftSight V1R1.3

The newer V1R1.4 version doesn't need any more the library from Natty and probably sendmail. Also the path to DraftSight's startup script has been changed to /opt/dassault-systemes/draftsight/bin/draftsight